Though the current project started as a series of posts charting my grief journey after the death of my mother, I am no longer actively grieving. Now, the blog charts a conversation in living, mainly whatever I want it to be. This is an activity that goes well with the theme of this blog (updated 2018). The Sense of Doubt blog is dedicated to my motto: EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY. I promote questioning everything because just when I think I know something is concrete, I find out that it’s not.

Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #452 - Alicia Machado Tells Trump Off

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #452 - Alicia Machado Tells Trump Off

Hi Mom, Not to have two Trump related posts in a row, but, gee wiz, there's so many things worthy of posting.

I am not usually want to rant and rave or run people's noses in the idiocy of our political candidates, but the things Trump does are so almost impossible to believe that it reinforces my belief that we have fully entered DeBord's Society of Spectacle, the circus, so deep in the maze that we no longer know we're in a maze. THERE IS NO SPOON.

Really, just say it with me, THERE IS NO SPOON.

Anything with "slut-shaming" gets my attention as this is one of my causes, one of my top causes to champion. Alicia Machado has done a brilliant job of responding to the Drumpf.

Friends, that’s just textbook slut-shaming. Trump didn’t even try to hide what he was doing, asserting in another tweet that the bad things he said about her don’t matter because she’s not “a paragon of virtue.” (These tweets all came in the middle of the night, by the way, because apparently the idea of a woman in charge of her own sexuality and not feeling bad about it was keeping him up at night.) First of all, it doesn’t matter whether or not Machado made a sex tape. Let’s let that just stand on its own up front. Hillary Clinton brought her to the debate to help point out bad things Trump says about women, which has nothing to do with whether or not that woman made a sex tape—or anything else she might have done, because she’d still be a human being who deserves respect.

In addition, there’s nothing wrong or morally disqualifying about making a sex tape. A presidential candidate for the United States is literally trying to discredit a woman for doing something tons of people do in their normal lives. [UPDATE: Of course there wound up being something Trump has said to fill in the second half of this paragraph. As one of our intrepid commenters pointed out, Trump hypocritically has no problem watchingpeople’s sex tapes, as The Daily Beast reported he watched Paris Hilton’s. He’d known Hilton since she was twelve, by the way, and the comments to that effect, also reported on The Daily Beast, are unsettling to say the least.]

All that’s bad enough completely on its own, but the specific facts of the situation make it even more disgusting for Trump to bring up. Claims of Machado’s “sex tape” stem from a scene filmed for a reality show called La Granja in 2005, in which Machado is supposedly having sex with a man in some grainy night-vision footage where they’re both covered by sheets. That, Donald Trump is not OK with, because it doesn’t serve his ends, I guess, but he was more than happy for Machado to participate in the Miss Universe pageant and use her looks for his benefit—until he didn’t like how much she weighed, of course.

To be absolutely clear, I don’t think Machado should be shamed for any of those things, but Donald Trump makes his position very clear as well: Women’s sexuality should exist entirely for his benefit, and anything else is worthy of shame and dismissal.

Machado, for her part, has responded perfectly to the attempts to smear her by Trump and others on the right who’ve grabbed onto this shame narrative:

Machado’s response, according to the Revelist, begins, “The Republican candidate and his campaign team are again generating attacks, insults and trying to revive slurs and false accusations about my life.” She continues that Trump simply tries to discredit women’s bad experiences with him, and he’s just using this to distract the American people from his own problems and how incapable he is to be the leader of this country. I’d guess another thing he’s trying to distract people from is the fact that his poll numbers are quickly reacting to his poor debate performance on Monday night. We can only hope that leaning into this particular controversy has more of a negative impact on Trump than his distraction tactics have in the past.

NOTE on time: When I post late, I had been posting at 7:10 a.m. because Google is on Pacific Time, and so this is really 10:10 EDT. However, it still shows up on the blog in Pacific time. So, I am going to start posting at 10:10 a.m. Pacific time, intending this to be 10:10 Eastern time. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. But I am not going back and changing all the 7:10 a.m. times. But I will run this note for a while. Mom, you know that I am posting at 10:10 a.m. often because this is the time of your death.

I am Christopher Tower the gmr

I am Christopher Tower (or Chris), and I am a writer of stuff. I live in Michigan. I play Ultimate, ride a bike, and supposedly educate college persons while myself being educated in college. I am married with two kids, a beagle, a curly lab, and a grouchy black cat. I like sushi. I love all SF, fantasy, comic books, D&D, board games, and Gnosticism. I am a Jungian. I am currently studying computer science at WMU.

EFF

Satchel

SENSE OF DOUBT STATUS AS OF 0705.04 - 16:45

Sense of Doubt is not currently dedicated to any themes or special interest. The subject matter is mine and may range from comic books to ultimate or from Baseball to feminist-centered media criticism. Until I feel I have enough content for multiple blogs, or until I am seized with a desire to create multiple blogs, this is it, and appropriately so. "Sense of Doubt" came about in Bowie’s Berlin period and the dark, ambient collaborations with Brian Eno. Like the Bowie of 1978, I have my own darkness that steals over me and through me, infecting everything. At the risk of sounding far too melodramatically obsessed with my own self-flagellations, this blog dedicates itself to that darkness, that infection. But it’s fun, too. Hey, I can be amusing? Or not. It’s the way of the [w]rench. Neurosis compelling action in insecure double-checking and misunderstanding evasions. It is my way.

More from the original description text that needed editing in 2015: Furthermore, Sense of Doubt is dedicated to the random. The theme is no theme. Just questions, doubt, and uncertainty. Feel the power of not knowing the answer. So dedicated on the last day of July 2006 by the Galactic Monkey Wrench.

The Blog about my job

It's about how my identity was taken from me by the powers that think they be, an identity, a job, I held for ten years. Go there if curious.

the galactic monkey wrench

The Galactic Monkey Wrench

This is the logo of the Galactic Monkey Wrench. I was given the nickname Galactic Monkey Wrench in college by a friend of mine who felt that I threw the monkey wrench into the cosmos at every available opportunity. Later, in discussions with my best friend, who isthe Lord of Chaos (the Loc), he asked for my title and when I told him, without thinking, he blurted out "the gmr!" Since this was random and we appreciate randomness, I became the gmr, even though technically I should be the gmw. But gmw sounds like a car or some industrial manufacturing firm that makes a strange widget of which one has never heard.
This acronym fetish may make no sense to anyone else, but my friend and I are quite driven to provide acronyms for many things. At the very least, it allows us to keep our conversations obscure and often private as no one knows about what we're talking.

Sense of Doubt Rare video

the gmrstudios repository of doubt

Christopher Tower's Facebook Posts

Monkey Wrench Books

This book is a little slower than the others. But if you become invested in this series, it provides key information about the history of Westeros and the lands across the Narrow Sea. It may not contain chapters with my favorite characters ...

Do I really need to review this book? It's one of the best books I have ever read. Martin is a great writer. All the books are great, and I am loving my time rereading them. If you have not checked out these books, start here and get ready ...

These books are immensely entertaining. Treat yourself to some strong writing, great action, compelling characters, and a mix of metaphysics and theology. The ending of this third book, which is presumably the last, is anti-climactic and so...

This was a fun book. Not OSC's best but very good OSC nonetheless. The best thing about is the time travel, slowing, and speeding powers of the characters and how OSC engages the reader in discussion of causality and time paradox. For fans ...

This book came to me via my wife Liesel who discovered it and urged me to read it. Beautifully written with compelling characters and a sense of the magical (yet realistic, somewhat). Funny yet full of the pathos that marks a good if not gr...